At the start of May MyVoice surveyed the members of their internet community by means of a private survey regarding portable music players. They got 14,913 valid responses to their internet questionnaire, with 54% of the sample female, 4% in their teens, 21% in their twentiesm 39% in their thirties, 24% in their forties, and 12% in their fifties.

I have a Sony hard disk-based music player on test, but rather than a product review (I’ve mentioned it before myself, and Gen Kanai has a long thread or three on issues with the software) I’ll review myself. Before I got the machine on loan, I hadn’t used a portable player since perhaps my university days.

The first thing I noticed, for perhaps three or four days wearing it on my commute to work, was that the world seemed different; I felt I was stepping back from reality into a little cocoon that shielded me from some of the – well, I don’t really know what, just a transparent bubble that kept everyone else from intruding into my personal aural space, and to some extent my consciousness too. Once these feelings faded – or at least until I assimilated them as a normal commuting state – and as I started loading the player up with a decent amount of music, I noticed I was becoming a very selfish and intolerant listener. Before, I used standard CDs almost exclusively, and even ripped content was played on a per album basis, and I’d often keep the same album loaded up for days if not weeks at a time, playing it over and over. Now, with 300 tracks at my fingertips I find myself hitting the Next Track button an awful lot, tracks get marked down on a whim, and I find myself seeking out my favourites far too often. Part can be attributed to a lack of functionality in the software on the player; I’d love an enhanced random shuffle mode that took into account rating when selecting what to play so I’d only hear my one star tracks once in a blue moon, and skipping a track before getting past the intro downrates it a bit.

I think I should get rid of the player before it destroys my sense of musical appreciation completely, and buy a 128Mb player that I can only load one or two albums at a time onto. Yes, I’ll never listen to music on that player again.

Meanwhile, back at the survey, the Japanese people had this to say about the matter.

Q1: What type of portable audio player to you use the most? (Sample size=14,913)

This surveyMay 2006

Last surveyMay 2005

Digital audio player (Solid-state memory based)

12.6%

7.9%

Portable MD player

12.0%

19.8%

Digital audio player (Hard disk based)

10.0%

6.7%

Portable CD player

6.8%

10.3%

Music download-enabled mobile phone

6.4%

N/A

Digital audio player (unknown whether memory or disk-based)

2.3%

N/A

Cassette player

1.5%

2.5%

Other

1.1%

1.8%

Don’t use any

47.3%

51.1%

Q2: Select all the brands or makers of all the digital audio players you currently use. (Sample size=digital audio player users, multiple answer)

iPod

43.5%

Sony

13.7%

iRiver

8.2%

Rio

7.4%

Creative

5.6%

D-snap (Panasonic)

4.0%

Gigabeat

3.8%

SHARP

1.8%

Adtec

1.3%

Samsung

1.2%

Kenwood

1.2%

Seagrand

1.0%

Olympus

1.0%

iAudio

1.0%

Sanyo

0.9%

Torica

0.3%

woodi

0.1%

Other

12.9%

No answer

0.2%

Wow! The iPod has nearly half the market!

Q3: If you were buying a digital audio player, what sort of things are important? (Sample size=14,913, up to three answers)

Price

66.6%

Sound quality

39.1%

Design

35.1%

Usability

34.1%

Hard disk size

33.1%

Portability

20.3%

Maximum playback time

13.8%

Durability

12.7%

Brand or maker

8.5%

Whether battery can be changed

7.3%

File formats supported

7.2%

Ability to load music without a PC

5.2%

Display readability

4.3%

Voice recorder functionality

2.6%

Works with pay-for download service

2.3%

Video playback features

2.0%

Accessory kit availability

1.4%

Associated music library management software

1.1%

Other

1.3%

Don’t think I want to buy

9.0%

No answer

2.1%

Q4: If you have downloaded music files onto your computer, how do you manage them? (Sample size=14,913, multiple answer)

Use music file management software (to Q5 and Q6)

22.5%

Manage files my own way

16.5%

Other

0.8%

Don’t do any particular management

16.9%

Don’t download music

43.8%

No answer

2.7%

Q5: Select which one of the following music management software you use the most. (Sample size=music management software users)

iTunes

46.9%

Windows Media Player

23.0%

SonicStage

13.7%

SD-Jukebox

3.4%

CONNECT Player

1.6%

iRiver plus

1.5%

Creative MediaSource

0.8%

Toshiba Audio Application

0.7%

Rio Music Manager

0.4%

MusicFileMaster

0.4%

JetShell

0.2%

MOOCS Player

0.2%

Kenwood Media Application

0.1%

m:trip

0.1%

Samsung Music Studio

0.0%

Other

5.9%

No answer

0.9%

Q6: How satisfied are you with your music management software? (Sample size=music management software users)

Totally satisfied

18.9%

Somewhat satisfied

44.7%

Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied

26.7%

Somewhat dissatisfied

7.0%

Totally dissatisfied

1.5%

No answer

1.2%

This gives 63.6% expressing some degree of satisfaction. For the top four players from Q5, iTunes had the most happy users, with 26.9%+46.8% = 73.7% satisfied to some degree. Next were Sony’s SonicStage users, at 15.0%+47.4% = 62.4%, then Microsoft’s Windows Media Player at 13.2%+41.5% = 54.7%, then bringing up the rear was Panasonic’s SD-Jukebox at 9.7%+42.5% = 52.2% happy to some degree.